UMA stands for “Unlicensed Mobile Access” and describes a telecommunication system allowing roaming and handover between local area networks and wide area networks using the same dual-mode mobile phone. That means that with a UMA phone, you can talk alternatively on a GSM/GPRS network and on a wireless LAN with VoIP.

It looks like Samsung realized the potential of this technology and made all efforts to the be the first to launch a UMA phone. The SGH-P200 phone was launched in the Italian market and it’s the first commercial phone to which UMA technology is applied.

Samsung’s UMA phone allows free switching between cellular networks such as GSM, GPRS, EDGE and wireless LAN networks (WiFi), with seamless connectivity. If you are already familiar with VoIP phones, than you can easily imagine that you can use Samsung’s P200 with your normal mobile carrier subscription and, when you are enter an airport, a shop, or the comfort of your own house, the phone can automatically switch to a WiFi hotspot without you noticing.

The UMA technology has the advantage that it can deliver much higher speeds for data communication when using WiFi thus enhancing the quality of the data that your phone transfers.

The UMA phone also comes in a sophisticated slide-up design as well as cutting-edge features including 1.3 mega pixel camera, a camcorder, multimedia messaging system (MMS), MP3 and file viewer functions.

“Samsung is proud to introduce the first Unlicensed Mobile Access phone into the market. We will continue to introduce innovative products and lead the next generation fixed-mobile convergence technology.” said Kitae Lee, president of Samsung’s Telecommunication Network Business.

The launch of Samsung’s UMA phone will follow in other European countries soon, and with this step we can definitely say that the UMA technology was unleashed and more great news are about to come about this subject.